g of permanence, of stability, defying time and change, pervades
it. The place, the people, and the monuments alike breathe of
eternity."

I was mightily surprised at this rhetorical outburst on the part of
this dry, taciturn lawyer. But I liked him the better for the touch of
enthusiasm that made him human, and determined to keep him astride of
his hobby.

"Yet," said I, "the people must have changed in the course of
centuries."

"Yes, that is so. The people who fought against Cambyses were not the
race who marched into Egypt five thousand years before--the dynastic
people whose portraits we see on the early monuments. In those fifty
centuries the blood of Hyksos and Syrians and Ethiopians and Hittites,
and who can say how many more races, must have mingled with that of the
old Egyptians. But still the national life went on without a break;
the old culture leavened the new peoples, and the immigrant strangers
ended by becoming Egyptians. It is a wonderful phenomenon. Looking
back on it from our own time, it seems more like a geological period
than the life history of a single nation. Are you at all interested in
the subject?"

"Yes, decidedly, though I am completely ignorant of it. The fact is
that my interest is of quite recent growth. It is only of late that I
have been sensible of the glamor of things Egyptian."

"Since you made Miss Bellingham's acquaintance, perhaps?" suggested Mr.
Jellicoe, himself as unchanging in aspect as an Egyptian effigy.

I suppose I must have reddened--I certainly resented the remark--for he
continued in the same even tone: "I made the suggestion because I know
that she takes an intelligent interest in the subject and is, in fact,
quite well informed on it."

"Yes; she seems to know a great deal about the antiquities of Egypt,
and I may as well admit that your surmise was correct. It was she who
showed me her uncle's collection."

"So I had supposed," said Mr. Jellicoe. "And a very instructive
collection it is, in a popular sense; very suitable for exhibition in a
public museum, though there is nothing in it of unusual interest to the
expert. The tomb furniture is excellent of its kind and the cartonnage
case of the mummy is well made and rather finely decorated."

"Yes, I thought it quite handsome. But can you explain to me why,
after taking all that trouble to decorate it, they should have
disfigured it with those great smears of bitumen?"

"Ah!" said Mr. Jell